If it was RRD, then try to find the host plant for the mites that carry the disease. This will be a large plant, upwind from your property. If you can find this plant, and remove it, then you'll have a better chance of success.

Do a search on "RRD" here, and in the Antique Roses forum, you'll get a lot of info. Quite a few posters do replant in the same area, but they remain vigilant in checking their plants. Good luck.

Let that sink in.

Do search for it upwind of your roses. At this time of the year, it will be growing vigorously on the sick parts and they will probably be a reddish color that the rest of multiflora doesn't have.

Yes, you can replant in those spots especially since the plants weren't long established.

But first, please, check upwind of your garden. And remove the source of the problem.

Then replant.

I don't have a picture. I took cuttings of the canes to a couple of local nurseries and both places said rosette disease. The canes were very red with an abnormal amount of thorns compared to the green canes. The redness was the entire cane even where it emerged from the root stock. The canes were very limp too. Based on the pictures that I saw on the internet I think it was rosette disease. Maybe I jumped the gun but I have lots of other roses so I wanted to be preemptive.

Ann is right. I live in a heavily wooded area of CT. I removed wild roses when I first moved here but there might be other roses nearby. I'm sort of in shock and wonder if I should give up on roses altogether.

Thanks for all of the comments.

One thing I didn't type above was to ask if these particular roses happened to be planted in a place, were it a snow fence, where snow would have accumulated.

The vector mites do drop out of the air when the air currents drop significantly.

I've got one place where I expect to loose a rose each year because of the air currents that tend to slow there.

Hope this helps.